No time to waste! Weâre getting straight into it for you to live a more fulfilling and exciting life no matter your situation.
Tip #1: Donât buy yourself more stuff
Tip #2: Donât read anything again without actually applying and testing it in your life.
These two things have wasted countless years, money, relationships, happiness off of my life because I believed in something that looked too good to be true.
The last thing we need to hear these days is to stop impressing others with our wholesaled Chinese Louis Vuitton black market bag or to pretend the world is ending tomorrow and just go for our passions. This is all staple piece of advice we hear in any self-help guide, whether it is from Ed Mylett to a self-made guy living in a shack, they all have the same piece of advice. 80% of the world reads it and 1% of the population sticks to it.
The truth is, we are all consumers. We love to consume content and be enthralled with superficial stuff until we realize that isnât what brings us happiness. Letâs become producers instead of consumers. Achieving your goals, making mistakes, embarrassing yourself, and outlasting the competition, in the long run, is a proven token of success and better yet, happiness.
Rich quick doesnât exist. If it did, then we would all not be here reading about how to make our lives easier becuase the money would justify it. But it never does. After a certain amount of money earned, 70k to be exact, your happiness will plateau and stay stagnant because it cannot improve your chances of survival or strengthen relationships. It just lets you believe you are better than someone else for a given period of time until reality sets in and you need to be back to being a nice human or your money is worthless.
Gossip
Iâve heard this cheezy advice and to say it is fascinating to read but easy to store away in a drawer is an understatement. I guarantee you most of us do this. Why? Because when we read something, first off, most of us donât take notes or read slowly which makes us forget things and not actually apply anything in our life. The sole purpose of learning? Except for in school where memorizing facts to pass a test is all that is required. No wonder we are prepared to fail. Failure is against the rules in school so we can never apply knowledge and implement it into our life.
What is holding you back from completing anything are those flow charts, organization and unrealistic plans, or even worse, dreams that youâve made up because they worked for others. Focus on Plan A instead of Plan B and be messy. Just go for it. If you donâtâ know what you want, look at what would make your life easier by eliminating the junk that is sitting in the back of your closet and all the lessons you forget in those dusty bookshelves.
Life is as hard you as you make it. Of course, taking into account the circumstances upon which we are born into, we arenât able to change a whole lot until we become a reasonable age when we can start, talking and walking. We prefer to make ourselves feel bad for things that are in our control, taking away the joy from our lives that we constantly are in search of instead of acting upon it.
The rest of these fundamentals arenât as poignant as the first two put still vital to seek clarity and obviously, make your life easier.
Mindset is Everything
None of our lives have been easy. Weâve all gone through tough moments here nad there but those who survive are always the most optimistic. There are unexpected challenges and uncertainly that fall abruptly in our paths that we so graciously plan to perfect but we have the choice to block it out. Either look ahead at the light at the end of the tunnel or stay in darkness and always be disappointed with whatâs to come. It is up to you in what decision you choose. It is much easier to be angry and sad than happy hence why most people always complain about thereâs result when they take no action. This step is the easiest thing you can do to not take everything so personally, live in the present, and be grateful for what you have. What you want is just lying between you and a brave choice and it gets easier when you are more positive.
No wonder optimistic people are better off emotionally, physically, spiritually and mentally than any negative grinch. They make their lives easier, get that bonus, free snack, and treat others with respect which comes around. You never know when your generosity will come in handy when you will need help from someone finding a job or feeling less lonely. Servant leadership is always a necessity. Never forget it and no one will forget you.
Learning Is Always Your Top Priority
The reason graduates hooray when they graduate and are excited for the new chapter in their lives is not actually becuase they finished school, rather they assume they are done with learning and that upsets me.
Learning is a life long process, never a destination. Just because you landed that top-tier job that you always wanted doesnât mean you are prepared. Luck comes and goes and can never be predicted. The more chances you take, the more luck gets sprinkled into your life. The same thing with learning. The more you learn, the more opportunities, experiences, chances, creativity, and ideas will spark. At work for sure, you will have to learn on the job. Most graduates arenât prepared, no wonder firms instill thousands into training programs before they start. When you are bored, instead of grabbing the remote for a new season of who knows what, open that book, talk to a mentor, make mistakes because you will only remember what insights you gained that you could apply to better your future. You will never remember the finale of the show you wasted time on. No wonder I remember what I watched only 50 minutes into a movie!
Once In For All. Stop Comparing
When you buy more stuff, there are either two reasons behind the choice:
#1: You really need it or want it
#2: Donât need it and just try to impress others and look ___
#2 is chosen more often than not. The average household has $1500 worth of stuff that they donât use and could be resold. Every time you compare yourself to someone else, you are not only lowering your self-esteem inhibiting triggers to your mental health, you are wasting time away from achieving what you see in that person you compare yourself to.
Why do you hop on social media and start endlessly scrolling for hours? What are you really checking? How everyone elseâs highlight reeled, filtered lives compared to your old boring life? We tend to forget that we purposely chose the photos that we assume will get the most likes in order to feel validated, not the one that makes the person on the other side feel right. The only person you need to impress is yourself. That is easier said than done but you must be your biggest cheerleader, not always your worst critic.
The only good thing that comes out of looking at what others have, is solidifying your dreams. But 9 times out of 10, it only makes you jealous, less grateful, less worthy, and poor. The grass is never greener on the other side. Someone wants what you have and your worst day is someoneâs best day. Focus on yourself, not in a selfish spoiled way but through a healthy development that will lead to results instead of feelings of regret.
Food and Sleep Are The Best Medicine
Forget the exercise. There are the more gyms in NYC than in Japan combined. No wonder 70% of us are overweight and 40% obese in America. Exercise only leads us to believe that âbadâ food can be eaten in replace of it.
There is no such thing as eliminating or restricting. Food is for pleasure and fuel, not for replacements. It is astonishing to imagine that we have gotten to a point in time where there are disorders such as bulimia and orthorexia exist. An addiction to being healthy or throwing up every time you eat a brownie due to guilt is the most common feeling within teenage girls. What type of image do you want to display and most importantly, why beat yourself up like that?
Screw clean eating and the South Beach diet, each the Earth and move because you want to not need to and I guarantee you will live till you are 100. To a certain point, you have to give up all of these assumptions and the scale to enjoy life. You only have 1. How much skinnier and sickly do you want to get to realize that that doesnât help anyone?
Sleep
Without sleep, there is nothing in your body that is not affected and with food, thatâs all that matters. Sticking with whole foods on a budget, not shopping at the actually Whole Foods is possible as well because in the long run, it will save you thousands of medical visits down the road. Skip the processed junk becuase it is an addiction filled with chemicals, sugar which is known as lethal in some instances and provides no nutritional value besides temporary pleasure then immediate guilt and side affects that are not worth it.
My trick is not to take food so seriously or focus on it too much. It shouldnât control your life and you donât have to eat at noon because its lunchtime. We are past middle school when lunchtime is at a designated time.
-Listen to your hunger cues
-Eat for fuel, not boredom
-Eat with others to enjoy the experience + pleasure and slow down
-You donât need as much food as you think you do, you will never starve
-There is no shortage, always a surplus of food, especially in America
-Never restrict, moderation with everything. Eat those d** brownies, and cheese!
-Portion control
Exercise
Exercise is to make you feel better and stronger. Eating is to fuel and keep you alive. If you abolish exercise tomorrow and incorporated exercise part of your daily routine like our grandparents did through walking to work and standing regularly, with a meal as suggested above, you will never need to worry about becoming at risk for countless diseases and illness that come with being overweight. You can sure be pretty but your body doesnât only feel gross, you are harming it in the process. Donât do that to yourself. Control. You will be with your body for the rest of your life so treat it as so. Have a healthy relationship with yourself before anyone else.
Servant Leadership Is The Best Gift
I used to be an avid volunteer back when I had time. There is this steoretype that volunteering only occurs at homeless shelters or soup kitchens. Why is that so? Anything that is considered helping from mowing the lawn to delivering groceries for your neighbor will not only serve them well but make you feel incredible.
We always feel the need to be paid for our time. I understand we really should if we are doing something useful but if you start getting picky all the time and trade off an opportunity to build a friendship for some money, you will have a very hard time building repoire. To tell what a person is really like see what they will do for more insight or love, not external factors such as money or fame.
Donât Take Everything So Seriously
This past year the racist video of the woman and her dog screening at a black man for telling her to put the dog on a leach in Central Park was the best example of why staying realistic and diplomatic in a respectable manner is always the best position to take. There was no reason for her to get mad and if she didnât overact, maybe her life wouldnât have been ruined. Now she is out of a job, embarrassed all over the internet and definitely doesnât want to step foot into Central Park again. Maybe only in a double mask and hoodie. Getting angry is the easy choice. She could have ignored him or listened. Her life wouldâve been completely different. You never know who is watching. Pretend you are at all times to make your life and someone elseâs easier.
Plan For The Worst, Hope For The Best
Getting your financial situation in order is usually a task that we delegate when we deem ourselves as adults. That time usually comes around when we graduate college but the truth is, by the time we graduate, that is the last thing we want on our plate. We are finally in the real world and with most students dealing with student loan debt, possible car payments, mortgage, and poor budgeting skills, the smartest idea to bring you financial freedom and sanity is to monitor and understand what is coming before it comes. As weâve encountered during this pandemic, those who do not prepare for the worst, are seriously struggling. As with every pandemic, the rich get richer and the poorer get poorer not because of luck, status, or money, but because of the financial securities blanket that they initiated. No one wants to lose their job and we all wish the future was bright forever but Iâm afraid that isnât the case. Being too optimistic is a bad thing for this reason. With your finances, you cannot treat it as a game or fun, be realistically pessimistic so you can make sure that you wonât go into debt or be evicted once another bat injects a disease into another human.
Regardless of what stage you are in life, to be best situated for any financial hardship and always have a guaranteed roof under your head, these are must-haves:
Have at least 2 income sources to fall back on in case you lose one of them
Some include:
-Main job
-Investments
-Rental income
-Intellectual property (books, YouTube videos, guides, articles), make money when you sleep through passive income
-Royalties-similar to intellectual property. Constant cash flow and dividends
-Alternative investments: dividends, commodities, international stocks, private equity, hedge funds
-With a Severance from your job because you can only file for unemployment with this not if you got fired or left your job
-Withdraw from your ROTH or 529C College plan(have to pay penalties)
-Side Hustles to have on the backburner for extra cash. Everything from being an Uber driver to working remotely as a phone receptionist or assistant
– 1st Last resort cannot promise will work: Always have a backup of friends or immediate family that can help support you. Relationships are everything but if they are struggling as well, cannot be guaranteed
-2nd Last Resort: If you have to, tap into your 401k
Especially during COVID, our lives have turned around but these core philosophies are ones that will always stay true no matter what hardship we are facing. It is important to prioritize what is important to worry about and what can wait. Not everything requires 100% focus and energy on what others do. Everything in your life requires a choice and that choice can go the easy or hard route depending on your mindset. The last thing you need is another thing on your plate. Reherse and get them in order so you can relax and finally live life a little more normal again.